| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: right in my face; the trade blew pure and cool and delicious; I
felt as right as ninepence, and stopped and chatted with the
patients whom I still met on their horses, with not the least
disgust. About half-way over, I met the superintendent (a leper)
with a horse for me, and O, wasn't I glad! But the horse was one
of those curious, dogged, cranky brutes that always dully want to
go somewhere else, and my traffic with him completed my crushing
fatigue. I got to the guest-house, an empty house with several
rooms, kitchen, bath, etc. There was no one there, and I let the
horse go loose in the garden, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep.
Dr. Swift woke me and gave me breakfast, then I came back and slept
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: She hesitated; I thought she was perhaps going to say that we had been
very base. But she remarked after a moment, in a candid, wondering way,
"How much you must want them!"
"Oh, I do, passionately!" I conceded, smiling. And this chance
made me go on, forgetting my compunction of a moment before.
"How can she possibly have changed their place herself?
How can she walk? How can she arrive at that sort of muscular exertion?
How can she lift and carry things?"
"Oh, when one wants and when one has so much will!" said Miss Tita,
as if she had thought over my question already herself and had simply
had no choice but that answer--the idea that in the dead of night,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: roadway between two tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the
chateau, by merely planting out in it about a hundred walnut trees
which he found ready in the nursery. In eleven years these trees had
grown and branched so as to nearly cover the road, hidden already by
steep banks, which ran into a little wood of thirty acres recently
purchased. When the chateau had its full complement of inhabitants
they all preferred to take this covered way through the breach to the
main road which skirted the park walls and led to the farm, rather
than go round by the entrance. By dint of thus using it the breach in
the sides of the moat had gradually been widened on both sides, with
all the less scruple because in this nineteenth century of ours moats
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: DORSET. Dispute not with her; she is lunatic.
QUEEN MARGARET. Peace, Master Marquis, you are malapert;
Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current.
O, that your young nobility could judge
What 'twere to lose it and be miserable!
They that stand high have many blasts to shake them,
And if they fall they dash themselves to pieces.
GLOUCESTER. Good counsel, marry; learn it, learn it, Marquis.
DORSET. It touches you, my lord, as much as me.
GLOUCESTER. Ay, and much more; but I was born so high,
Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top,
Richard III |
